Health and Sport Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 24, 2020

Official Report 584KB pdf

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Subordinate Legislation

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Health Protection (Coronavirus) (International Travel) (Scotland) Amendment (No 23) Regulations 2020 (SSI 2020/378)

Good morning. Welcome to the 31st meeting in 2020 of the Health and Sport Committee. We have received apologies this morning from Alex Cole-Hamilton. I ask all members and other participants to ensure that mobile phones are on silent and that other notifications are turned off during the meeting.

The first item on our agenda today is consideration of a made affirmative instrument. As in previous weeks, the regulations relate to coronavirus and international travel and are laid under section 94(1) of the Public Health etc (Scotland) Act 2008. Section 122(5) of that act states that regulations under section 94(1) are subject to the affirmative procedure. However, provision is made that ministers can make those regulations urgently, in which case section 122(7) applies. Section 122(7) of the act sets out that “emergency regulations” must be laid before the Scottish Parliament and cease to have effect on the expiry of the period of 28 days beginning on the first day of the regulations being made, unless the regulations are first approved by Parliament. It falls to the Health and Sport Committee to consider the instrument and report to Parliament accordingly. The regulations we are considering today relate to the addition or removal of various countries and territories from the exemption list.

I welcome once again to the committee Humza Yousaf, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice. He is accompanied by Anita Popplestone, head of police complaints and scrutiny; Craig Thomson, border measures review team leader; and James Boyce, unit head, health performance and delivery.

I invite the cabinet secretary to make some introductory remarks.

Good morning, convener. As always, I hope that you and the committee are all doing well.

The regulations remove Greece, other than the islands of Rhodes, Kos, Corfu, Crete and Zakynthos, from the list of exempt countries, territories or parts of countries or territories. They also remove the sovereign base areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia in Cyprus from the list of exempt United Kingdom overseas territories. They add Bahrain, Cambodia, Chile, Iceland, Laos, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the list of exempt countries or territories or parts of countries or territories—known as schedule A1, part 1—and add the Turks and Caicos Islands to the list of exempt UK overseas territories.

As always, I am more than happy to take questions.

Thank you. I encourage any colleagues who have questions for the cabinet secretary to put an “R” in the chat box in order to indicate that before we move to the formal debate.

We heard this morning of plans that have been approved in relation to travellers returning to England, which will effectively enable the period of quarantine to be reduced from 14 days, which currently applies, to a much shorter time, with a test after perhaps five days, which would end quarantine one or two days later, if the result was negative. The comment that was made this morning was that the devolved Administrations were considering what action to take in relation to similar proposals. Can you briefly update us on your consideration of such a step?

I am happy to do so. When I appeared before the committee last week, I alluded to the fact that there was likely to be an announcement in the coming days. Today, as you say, there has been an announcement by the UK Government. On the positives, engagement has been constructive with the UK Government. It has engaged with my officials and engaged with me as a ministerial colleague, and we discussed this issue at our last Covid meeting. I am in a very similar position to my colleagues in Wales and, I think, Northern Ireland as well; certainly, the Welsh Government expressed the same views as the Scottish Government. My position, which is not too dissimilar to what I said last week, is that I definitely think that there is merit in looking at the test and release proposal of the UK Government.

As you can imagine, I have spoken to our chief medical officer about this, and we have a few concerns. First, do we understand and do we have detail about the efficacy of the proposal? Where is the evidence base? We do not have the evidential basis for the test and release proposal yet, so we asked for that last week when we were told about it. The first thing is whether we can get the evidence base that underpins the proposal. My officials may be able to say whether we have received that yet, but I certainly have not seen the evidential basis. The first issue is we are waiting for that.

The second issue is that the test would rely on private testing capacity in order not to use up national health service capacity. I think that that is right, but what we have to do from a Scottish perspective is ensure that we have that private sector capacity available.

The third question, which I think I alluded to last week, is the question of timing. The UK Government’s proposals would come into place around 15 or 16 December. Is that a suitable time to test a pilot? This is a pilot. It has not been done before in the UK. It could have some teething problems. Is the best time to test that when you are likely to have an uplift, albeit a modest uplift, in numbers during the peak travel period, or would it be better to test a system like this in an off-peak period? That is a question that we are considering at the moment. I hope that that answers the question. As I say, the system will not come into place in England until the middle of December, I think, so we have some time to work through those issues.

You used the word “pilot”, but my understanding is that the intention is that this will apply to all travellers arriving in England at airports or seaports. It is a pilot perhaps in a technical sense but it will work on a much larger scale than we would be operating.

I understand that you are waiting for some evidence on the public health side, but would I be right to assume that you and your officials have been considering the issues around the infrastructure and the mechanics for making that happen are ones for some time?

Yes, absolutely. There is engagement with the airlines and, in particular, the airports. I do not know whether they have put out a public comment, but when they were telling us about the media requests that they were receiving on this, they were certainly going to point to positive and constructive engagement. I think that the airports will be pushing us to ensure that they are not at a competitive disadvantage, and I can understand that point. My colleague, Michael Matheson, will of course be engaged in that discussion.

On the evidential basis, I understand that you are waiting for some further information from the UK Government on that. Again, there will be a view that the general scientific and medical advice that is received by you and your colleagues in the Scottish Government will not be different in essence from the advice received by the UK Government, although it may differ in detail. Is there any fundamental problem from the point of view of the Scottish Government in proceeding with the proposal, assuming that the detailed advice is compatible with your own analysis of the situation?

There certainly is not an in-principle or ideological objection. If we can align with others across the UK on a test and release basis, we would want to do that. Our position is based on the logistics and the clinical advice. When I talk about clinical advice, it is also about the efficacy of what we are doing.

Rightly, there have been probing questions—including questions from this committee—about compliance around the 14-day self-isolation period. I have been up front about the fact that, although spot checks are done by Public Health Scotland and there is follow-up by Police Scotland, there is no doubt there are questions about how well the 14-day isolation period is being complied with.

Although 14-day self-isolation is the most effective measure, the question is whether, if there were a shorter period, people would be more likely to comply with that, which would make it an effective measure. That is what the UK Government’s argument is. I think that there is some logic to that. What we are asking for is to be shown the evidence base for that. The issue is not just clinical; it is about behavioural psychology and so on, and we would like to see that evidence base. If the evidence supports the the test and release proposal, I can absolutely see the logic of moving ahead with it.

Thank you, cabinet secretary. Donald Cameron will ask the next question.

On the same topic, would it be your ambition to mirror what is happening in the rest of the UK? If you are satisfied, would you see the sense of applying the same regime across the four nations of the UK?

The short answer is yes. I should say that it is not happening in the rest of the UK. At the moment, it is happening in England. I know that Wales has similar concerns. I could not state Northern Ireland’s position; it is still to take a view. Certainly, in principle, it would make absolute sense for there to be alignment across the four nations and it would be preferable for that to start at the same time, if possible, but I know that you understand that we also have to be guided by our clinicians and the clinical advice that we receive.

I have a rather technical question about the sovereign bases in Cyprus that you mentioned. Could you give a bit of explanation about the situation in that regard? I think that I am right in saying that Cyprus was removed from the exempt list at the start of November and the military bases were, effectively, kept out of that. Now, however, they are also being removed from the exempt list. Can you flesh that out a bit?

I can. There were a lot of interesting discussions about this. As you say, they are sovereign bases, so they were not included when Cyprus was removed. Of course, you will know about British military interest and assistance in Cyprus over the years. There was just a question about whether including Akrotiri and Dhekelia in the exemption would cause any problems for the Ministry of Defence. That was why they were not removed in the first instance, but when the MOD was able to confirm that removing the sovereign bases would not cause it any issue, the decision was made—to make it a lot neater, frankly—to remove them. To be honest, it does not make much of a difference anyway—certainly not to Scotland—but we were conscious that we did not want Scotland to make one decision that might impact the MOD or armed personnel in other parts of the UK. Once we got that sign-off from the MOD, we were more than comfortable about removing the sovereign bases. We were just waiting for the MOD’s approval.

Emma Harper will ask the next question.

Good morning. The UK Government’s website says that the cost of the testing strategy for international arrivals will basically be provided by the traveller, and that all testing will be done by private labs, although those labs will be approved by the UK Government. Could you say a couple of words about that? I am also interested in continuing to ensure that whatever we do is evidence based and driven by the fact that we need to protect people’s lives. We need to use the evidence to inform decisions that are made.

In short, there is agreement across the four nations. I do not think that I would be speaking out of turn at all if I said that we all believe that the cost of the test and release system should be borne by the traveller. If there is some kind of arrangement with the private sector, that is fine, but the essence of the proposal is that it should not infringe or impact in any way the NHS testing capacity. There is not a good justification for using NHS testing capacity—although we might have that capacity—for the benefit of people going to the Canary Islands for some winter sun. We are all aligned on that basis. That is why it is important, from a Scottish perspective, do to do the logistical work to see whether we have sufficient private sector capacity. That work is on-going.

10:15  

There is nothing for me to add on the evidence base, other than just to reiterate what I have already said. We are keen to move on a four-nations basis. There is a lot of sense in that, but we just need a little bit more understanding for the evidence base of the proposal. I am sure that it will be forthcoming. I would also like, as you would imagine, to continue to take views from our own CMO, particularly around the timing.

From what I am told by transport colleagues and Transport Scotland, based on their engagement with airlines, I understand that they expect only a modest uplift in passengers travelling this winter, so the timing issue may become a little bit more moot. However, I still want to make sure that we are exploring all those issues.

There are no more questions from members, so we will now move to agenda item 2, which is the formal debate on the made affirmative instrument on which we have just heard from the cabinet secretary. I remind members and others that this is a formal debate. The officials will not be taking part in the debate and no questions can be put to the cabinet secretary. However, of course, if members wish to contribute to the debate, they are more than welcome to do so.

I invite the cabinet secretary to move the motion S5M-23365.

Motion moved,

That the Heath and Sport Committee recommends that the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (International Travel) (Scotland) Amendment (No. 23) Regulations 2020 (SSI 2020/378) be approved.—[Humza Yousaf]

Motion agreed to.

The motion is approved. We will report to Parliament accordingly. I thank the cabinet secretary and his officials for their attendance this morning.

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Food and Feed (EU Exit) (Scotland) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (SSI 2020/372)

The next item is also consideration of subordinate legislation—this time, a negative instrument: the Food and Feed (EU Exit) (Scotland) (Amendment) Regulations 2020. Members will note that, in the briefing paper provided, it is suggested that we might wish to explore how the new functions conferred by the SSI on Food Standards Scotland—particularly those that relate to third countries—will work in practice. We might also want to ask what will replace some of the existing powers that are being revoked by the regulations. The suggestion in the paper is that we can either write to the Scottish Government to make those inquiries, while agreeing to make no recommendations today, or await the Government’s answer and then consider the matter further.

I have read the paper and agree with the recommendations. There are a couple of things that I want to raise, which are mentioned in paragraphs 6 and 8 of the paper. The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee is looking at the instrument today and we do not yet have its answer as to whether there are any matters that it wishes to raise. The paper mentions that, if we agree to the instrument today and any matters are raised by the DPLRC, it can come back to this committee. I ask for a wee bit of clarification on that. If the instrument is agreed to and then the DPLRC raises concerns regarding it, how does that work in the legislative process?

It is not a problem in the sense that the DPLRC’s role is to consider technically the compliance and so on of the regulations. Clearly, it would be a problem if the issues that it raised called into question the substance of the regulations themselves. However, the paper does not suggest that there is anything fundamentally at risk in our passing the regulations, although it does raise technical points.

It is, of course, open to us to decide, and perhaps, in response to Sandra White’s suggestion, we could contact the Scottish Government today with the questions that we want answers to. We could then postpone our final decision on the instrument until we have heard from the Government and the DPLRC—I am certainly relaxed about doing that. We do not have to sign off the regulations today. Anytime over the next couple of meetings will be soon enough, because they relate to changes that will come into force in due course and not immediately.

The paper says that the statutory instrument confers new functions on Food Standards Scotland and local authorities, and there is a list of the new functions. If we are going to assign new functions to Food Standards Scotland, do we need to be concerned about resourcing issues such as whether there are enough staff to cover the new functions? Is this to be just another burden on Food Standards Scotland, which we did not have before exiting the European Union?

That is a very fair question. The paper suggests that we might want to know how the new powers that relate to third countries will work in practice, given that Food Standards Scotland does not operate in third countries. We can add to that question the question of whether Foods Standards Scotland and local authorities will be resourced to deal with the new powers that are conferred on them by the regulations. Again, we can make a decision on the instrument at our next meeting or the meeting thereafter if we get the answer to those questions in time.

If members are agreed, that is what we will do. We will write to the Scottish Government, asking what the intention is in revoking the regulatory power for use when a third country may have caused concern and how that power is to be replaced. We will also ask Sandra White’s question about the concerns that may or may not come from the DPLRC and Emma Harper’s question about the resources that are available to Food Standards Scotland and local authorities. Finally, we will ask how Food Standards Scotland’s responsibilities in third countries will be carried out in practice. With all of that information, we should be in a position to consider the instrument again at a future meeting. We have to clear it before Christmas—that is the timescale that we are working to, so it does not have to be dealt with today.

Are we all agreed that we should take that approach?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you very much.